The only good news—at least the way Jazz saw it—was that the skies didn’t open up until she got home from Kim’s. Once they did, the rain kept up a wicked, steady pace all the while she tried and failed to get back to sleep, and it was still pouring when she finally gave up, got up, and took Wally for a walk that was way too short to get rid of his pent-up energy. They returned home, Wally’s wiry black and brown coat soaked. By the time Jazz dressed for work and got to her desk outside the office of the principal of St. Catherine’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, sleepy eyed and still annoyed at herself for falling for the drama that was Kim Kolesov, the rain was still coming down in buckets.
That was just fine with Jazz.
The weather pretty much matched her mood.
“I’m sorry to be dumping all this on you,” she said, and moved her phone from her right ear to her left so she could tap a finger against her keyboard and quickly scan the emails that had come into the school over the weekend. As administrative assistant to the principal, Sister Eileen Flannery, Jazz handled the day-to-day details, big and small, that kept the school running smoothly, the teachers working efficiently, and the girls as happy as girls in the seventh through twelfth grades can be. One of those details was centerpieces for the upcoming Fall Formal. Jazz saw an email from the florist and reminded herself to look it over carefully and get back to him soon. For now, though, she had more important things to deal with.
She spun her chair away from her desk. “I know you’re working and I know you’re busy,” she told Nick. How she wished she could see him through the phone. She needed the reassurance of the small smile she pictured, warm in spite of the worry. “I know it’s not fair to start off your week this way.”
“Not a problem. Believe me, I appreciate everything you did for Mom last night and I’m glad you’re keeping me in the loop. You went above and beyond. I know dealing with Kim can be—”
“Challenging?”
He laughed. “I was going to say as irritating as hell, but yeah, challenging works. The thing is…” Someone called to Nick and he held the phone away long enough to say he’d be right there before he went on. “I called Kim this morning before I knew any of this happened. I figured it didn’t hurt to see what she was up to.”
“And what did she say she was up to?”
“She said…” Nick paused, as if lining up the facts and determining how he felt about them. “Actually, this morning, she told me the exact same story she told you last night.”
“You mean about the man who came to her house and how she stabbed him and his body was in the backyard?”
“That’s the one.” She heard him take a sip of coffee, and since he’d told her early in their conversation that he’d been up all night on a stakeout, she hoped that coffee was black, strong, and piping hot, just the way he liked it. “Everything she told me, it lines up exactly with everything she told you, and when you think about it, that’s weird. Usually when Kim’s drinking, she’s all over the place.”
Jazz remembered the nearly empty bottle of Old Crow and the odor of bourbon that drifted off Kim like a noxious cloud. “Well, she’d definitely been drinking. And she said the man came in the evening, but she never called me until two. My guess is that in between, she was passed out.”
“And yet she got her story straight.” She knew Nick was thinking this over and she pictured him the way he looked when he was deep in thought, his blue eyes closed just the slightest bit, the right corner of his mouth pulled tight, his thumb tapping his chin. “It’s just odd, that’s all,” he finally said. “It makes me wonder—”
“If it actually could have happened?” Jazz had wondered, too, a hundred times when she got back home from Kim’s and she tossed and turned to the pounding noise of rain on the roof. Because there was no other explanation, she told Nick exactly what she’d told herself all those times. “There were no signs of a struggle in the yard. No bloodstains. Not on the sidewalk. Not on the driveway. Not in the grass. There was no body. Believe me, I looked.”
“And dead men don’t get up and walk away.”
“Not as far as we know.”
“She sure did sound convinced.” Jazz pictured him scraping a hand through his honey-colored hair the way he always did when he was baffled by a boneheaded play the Indians made or the appearance of what he thought of as an odd food at her Polish grandmother’s house. The man she’d heard call out to him before, the one Nick told he’d be right there, mumbled something in the background. “Look,” he told Jazz. “I’ve got to go.”
“When will you be back?” She could have kicked herself the moment the words were out of her mouth. She hated to sound needy. Then again, she hated dodging the truth. “The house is too quiet, and Wally misses playing tug with you. And I…” He was in a hurry. It was the wrong time to get emotional. “I miss you, too. Where are you, anyway?”
He chuckled. “Can’t give you an answer to either where I am or when I’ll be back. I can tell you I’ll check in as much as I’m able. Until then, if you could keep an eye on Kim, I’d really appreciate it.”
She had to swallow her knee-jerk response.
“Sure,” she told him instead. “I’ll do what I can.”
It wasn’t until they ended the call that she realized her teeth were gritted.
“Get a grip,” she mumbled to herself, and forced her brain away from the problem that was Kim by checking that email from the florist about the centerpieces for the formal.
Yellow mums, red carnations.
That took care of St. Catherine’s school colors.
The florist also suggested a few white mini carnations for what he called pop, and some touches of deep orange in keeping with the fall theme.
Jazz glanced through her rain-spotted office windows to Lincoln Park, the green space at the center of the Tremont neighborhood. She wondered how they even had the nerve to talk about fall when it was still officially summer. Like so many schools in the area, St. Catherine’s started classes before Labor Day, and it was early September. Because of sports schedules, testing, a state debate competition, and a drama club performance being planned in conjunction with St. Edward’s, an all-boys school in the area, Jazz and Eileen had to juggle the calendar and play fast and loose with the word fall. The Fall Formal would be held in just four days.
Not that the girls of St. Catherine’s were picky about what the calendar said.
Fall Formal was a special night, a chance for the girls to get out of their matching uniforms and show off their tastes in fashion and their panache.
It didn’t hurt that the boys from St. Ed’s would be joining them for this year’s festivities.
What with the excitement of the upcoming dance and all the plans the girls had for before-formal photos and after-formal parties, it was bound to be a high-energy week at St. Catherine’s.
“Raindrops on roses…”
When art teacher Sarah Carrington breezed into the office singing, Jazz realized the students weren’t the only ones caught up in the excitement.
“You’re looking chipper on a gloomy day,” she told Sarah. That is, before she thought about the reason for Sarah’s smile and Sarah’s good mood and the fact that Sarah stopped in front of the coffee machine over near the windows and did a pirouette.
“I guess you and Matt had a nice weekend,” Jazz said.
“Nope.” Sarah was middle-sized and nearing middle age. She brushed her curly blond hair out of her eyes and poured coffee into the mug she’d carried into the office, the one she’d gotten from her two boys that said Vegan Moms Club on it in bright green lettering. “Matt had a shift this weekend.”
Matt Duffey, Sarah’s main squeeze, was—like Jazz’s two brothers, Hal and Owen—a Cleveland firefighter. So was Jazz’s dad before he’d been killed in a fire nearly three years earlier. Jazz understood the routine. Shifts over weekends. Shifts over holidays. Birthdays and cookouts missed out of necessity. Holidays delayed. When she was a kid, her friends thought it was awful she sometimes had to wait until the day after Christmas to open presents, but to Jazz, it was just the way things were. Time apart meant time together was more special.
Some days, she thought it was all good training for dating a cop.
“What’s with the sunny smile?” As long as Sarah was running the state-of-the-art coffee machine, Jazz got up to get a cup, too. “If you were alone all weekend—”
“Well, I am going to see Matt tonight,” Sarah confided. “Dinner and a movie. But you know…” She tipped her head, thinking. “I used to think that’s what it was all about. Being together, I mean. Being joined at the hip. But now with Matt…” When she sighed, her turquoise top rose and fell and the orange beads she wore looped three times around her neck twinkled in the overhead lights. “It’s different. I miss him, sure. When he’s not around, I wish he was, and—”
Sarah caught herself and made a face. “Here I am complaining about a weekend shift and you and Nick haven’t seen each other in a couple of weeks.”
“We’re good,” Jazz assured her. “He’s busy. And this is a great opportunity for him. He’s working with cops from other jurisdictions, and the feds are part of the task force, too. He’s meeting new people, making new contacts.”
“And leaving you home all by yourself.”
“I’m not alone. I have Wally.”
“Cadaver dog in training.” Since Jazz and Sarah were best friends, Sarah could get away with rolling her eyes. “It wouldn’t be so bad if he was like a therapy dog or something. Then you’d be visiting sweet old people in nursing homes and I wouldn’t have to worry about you finding a body. Like…” Sarah looked at the ceiling and she didn’t need to say another word. A shiver cascaded over Jazz’s shoulders. Right before summer break, she and a certified human remains detection dog she was using for a demonstration had found a body hidden on the fourth floor of the school. It had been a difficult time for the students, the teachers, and the admin staff, and Jazz was glad they’d had the summer to distance themselves from the memories.
“It’s not going to happen again,” she assured Sarah—and herself. “I mean, yeah, I might be out with Wally and find a body. But chances are it will be someone who had a heart attack walking home from the grocery store or a person who’s gone missing while out hiking. Murder is not the norm.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Sarah told her. “From what I’ve seen of that critter, Wally may never calm down enough for you to turn him into a real cadaver dog.”
Jazz couldn’t take the criticism personally. After all, Sarah was right. The week before when Sarah stopped over, Wally had been extra crazy. He jumped around, hungry for the attention and the rough-and-tumble he got with Nick. Over and over again, he pushed his ball under the couch just so Sarah had to bend down and get it, thus proving how much she loved him.
In a lot of ways, the unruly puppy reminded Jazz of Kim.
She twitched away the thought.
“Wally’s getting there,” she told Sarah. “Slowly. Some dogs aren’t even trained for human remains detection work until they’re eighteen months old. They don’t have enough of an attention span before then.”
“Good luck with that attention span!” Sarah spun for the door. “And don’t forget, I’m picking you up on Friday.”
Jazz smiled. “Ah, the two single lady chaperones at the Fall Formal.”
“Hey, good thing Matt and Nick are both working and aren’t going to be there. Matt’s way too cute. All the little girls would go gaga for him. Nick’s plenty cute, too, but he’s got that cop vibe.” Sarah gave an exaggerated shiver. “He’d warn them off with a look. Did you decide what you’re wearing?”
Jazz glanced down at the black pants and oatmeal-colored blouse she’d worn that day. “I’ve got a black top that would go with these pants and—”
“Oh, honey!” Sarah scooted back across the office to put a sympathetic hand on her arm. “There’s a reason they call it a formal. Besides, what sort of role model do you want to be? You want the girls who come without dates to think they have to dress frumpy? That they need to have a boy in order to get dressed up and look fabulous?”
“No, of course not, but—”
“I want to see glamour. I want to see style. I want you to show our girls that date or no date, you can dazzle with the best of them. Come on, you go to weddings and things. You must have something appropriate to wear.”
Jazz mostly had the clothes she wore to work. Or the grubbies she tossed on for dog training. Sparkles were not exactly her thing.
Though she wasn’t sure she could make good on the promise, she told Sarah, “I’ll do my best.”
“You need an intervention?” Sarah wondered. “Do I need to go shopping with you?”
Before Jazz could remind her how much she hated shopping, Sister Eileen Flannery hurried into the office, a briefcase in one hand. She set it down so she could slip out of her raincoat and dash raindrops from her coppery hair. “Let me guess, you two are discussing fashion choices for Friday night. I have a feeling I’m going to be hearing a lot of that around here this week.”
“What are you wearing?” Sarah asked her.
Just because Eileen Flannery was the powerhouse who founded St. Catherine’s, managed St. Catherine’s, and made sure St. Catherine’s provided the best education for the girls who would become the women who would lead the world into what they all hoped would be a better and brighter future didn’t mean she didn’t have a sense of humor.
“I’m a nun,” she reminded Sarah with a straight face. “It’s my duty to look nunly. Even on formal occasions.”
Sarah pouted. “Well, Jazz is planning to look nunly, too.”
“What?” Jazz leapt to her own defense. “I never said—”
“I’ll work on her,” Eileen promised. “I’m thinking something slinky in a nice, bright color.”
Sarah thought it over. “Pink.”
“I am not wearing pink,” Jazz protested. “Too girly.”
“What’s wrong with being girly?” Eileen wanted to know. “Girly and smart. Girly and strong. Girly and tough.”
“Not pink.”
“Not black,” Sarah insisted. “Sure, it’s elegant, but we’re looking for fun. Upbeat. What do you say?” Sarah asked Eileen, speaking in a stage whisper clearly meant for Jazz to hear. “Tomorrow after school. We’ll kidnap her and drag her to the mall, kicking and screaming.”
“It’s a deal.” Eileen and Sarah exchanged thumbs-ups and Sarah headed out to the hallway.
“I really can take care of myself,” Jazz told her boss. “You and Sarah don’t have to hover.”
Eileen laughed. “We do if you want to keep Sarah happy. You know she’ll never stop bugging you until she has her way. Besides, she just wants to make sure you have a good time on Friday.”
Jazz’s “I’m planning on it” might have been more convincing if she didn’t end the statement with a gigantic yawn.
“Rough night?” Eileen wanted to know.
“Nick’s mother.” It was all Jazz was willing to say—there was no use burdening Eileen with the crazy story. She already knew enough details about Kim’s life.
“Well, hopefully you’ll have her all taken care of by Friday so you can relax and enjoy yourself. Until then…” Eileen grabbed her briefcase and headed into her office. “We really are taking you shopping tomorrow. After, we’ll celebrate your selection of an appropriate dress with dinner.”
There was no use arguing with Eileen. It was the most important thing Jazz had learned in the four years she’d worked at St. Catherine’s. She didn’t say a word, but she was still wondering how she’d get out of the shopping excursion when her phone rang. The voice on the other end of it was frantic.
“Jazz? Did you find it? Did you find the body yet?”
Jazz’s sigh floated up to the high ceiling. More than a hundred years earlier, when the building was constructed, it had been a Russian Orthodox seminary, and the architects who’d transformed it into St. Catherine’s had kept much of its old-world charm. Jazz’s office had glass-fronted bookcases, leaded-glass windows, and that high ceiling where her sigh pinged around and echoed back her frustrations.
In the hopes of making herself sound more confident and in control, she lifted her chin.
“Hello, Kim.”
“Did you?”
Jazz plunked down in the chair behind her desk. “We’ve been over all of this. Do you remember that I came over to your house last night?”
“What, you think I’m stupid?” Kim snapped. “Of course I remember. I called you and you came over and—”
“And I looked for the body you said was there, but there was no body.”
“But I told you last night. It has to be there. I saw him. He was plenty dead, and he didn’t just pop up and walk away.”
“Well, he wasn’t there when I was there, Kim. And I’m at work right now. I’ve really got to go.”
She ended the call before Kim could get in another word.
“You don’t like her.”
Jazz hadn’t realized Eileen was standing in the doorway between Jazz’s office and her own.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping. Honest!” Eileen said. As if to prove it, she lifted the mug she carried in her right hand and headed for the coffee machine. “I just couldn’t help but notice the way you handled her. The way you spoke. I’ve seen you in any number of touchy situations. You’re usually more sensitive.”
Jazz bristled. She didn’t like feeling defensive. Almost as much as she didn’t like having her behavior criticized.
“She was never much of a mother to Nick.”
Her back to Jazz, Eileen poured her coffee and stirred it. “But she is his mother.”
“You don’t have to deal with her.”
“No, I don’t.” The principal turned. “And you wouldn’t, either, if Nick wasn’t in your life.”
Jazz sputtered with outrage. “Are you telling me to dump Nick? Because of Kim?”
“If she’s that much of an irritation, maybe it would be for the best.” Eileen headed back to her office. “Like it or not, she’s part of the package.”
Jazz crossed her arms over her chest. “She called me at two this morning to tell me she murdered someone.”
Eileen never flinched. She did stop beside Jazz’s desk. “Did she?”
“Not as far as I can tell.”
“Which means she’s—”
“Drinking. Heavily. I told her it wasn’t possible. I mean about the dead guy. There’s no way it could have happened and now she just called again.…” As if it would somehow prove it, Jazz held up her phone. “She wants to know if I’ve found the body yet.”
Eileen took a sip of her coffee. “You know,” she said, “sometimes a person doesn’t need to be second-guessed. Especially a person whose addictions make her delusional. Sometimes, all that person needs is a little reassurance. A little comfort. And a big dose of understanding.”
By three thirty when school let out, the rain had finally stopped. By five, when Jazz left the building, the sun was peeking out from behind cotton clouds, glinting against the puddles in the school parking lot.
Because Wally expected it and deserved it after staying home in his crate and being a good boy all day, Jazz walked him and fed him before she loaded him into the car. By the time they got to their destination, the bells of St. Gwendolyn’s were ringing six o’clock.
She found Kim outside in her pink bathrobe, her hair sticking out around her head like an electrically charged halo, her feet shoved into red flip-flops. She had a stick in one hand and she used it to poke through the shrubbery along the front porch.
“He’s not here,” Kim mumbled to herself. “I thought he would be. But he’s not.…” Cursing, she stabbed the stick into the wet ground and left it there, upright and quivering. “He’s not here.”
When she turned and caught sight of Jazz, Kim’s top lip curled.
That is, until she noticed Wally.
Just like that, the starch went out of Kim’s shoulders and her expression melted from defiance to bliss.
“It’s a puppy!” Kim squatted and tapped her knees and Wally went running to her. Ordinarily, Jazz did not tolerate it when he jumped on people. It was rude on Wally’s part, not to mention dangerous for someone who wasn’t expecting just how powerful an Airedale could be. Sure, he was only seven months old, but Wally already weighed thirty-five pounds and would top out at around fifty. He needed to learn manners now before he was too big and unruly.
This time, though, she didn’t reprimand the puppy. Kim was smiling, and hey, who was she to ruin the moment?
“Nick told me about him,” Kim said, scratching a hand over Wally’s head. “But he didn’t say how cute he was.”
Jazz’s opinion of Kim went up a notch, at least until she asked, “Why did you bring me a dog?”
“I didn’t bring him to you, I brought him to visit you.” Jazz wanted to make sure Kim got that straight right from the beginning. It was bad enough Jazz often felt Nick’s time and Nick’s attention were torn between her and his mother. She didn’t want to have to argue with Kim about who Wally belonged to. “You know I do volunteer work with cadaver dogs.”
Kim stood up straight, and when Wally kept dancing around she flitted her hand over his brown, wedge-shaped ears. “You mean dogs that find dead people.”
“That’s right. I’m training Wally to be a cadaver dog. He’s still young, but I thought maybe if we let him look around your yard … well, maybe he can help us figure out what happened here last night.”
“He’ll find the body.” Kim patted Wally’s head one last time before she spun toward the backyard. “I know he will. That’s what he does, right?”
“Well, he’s still learning,” Jazz began, but she knew Kim wasn’t listening, that she didn’t want to hear the whys and the wherefores and the details of how it all worked, so she cut to the chase. “Yes, human remains detection dogs find bodies. But they can also find places bodies have been.”
“You mean like if there was a body there and it isn’t there anymore?”
“An HRD dog would know it. They’re trained to pick up the scent of decomposition. Even when there’s no body around.”
“Well, come on then.” Kim waved to Jazz and to Wally, too. “Let’s get going.”
Back by the garage, Jazz unhooked Wally’s walking leash and put a long leash on him so he could sweep the backyard and she could keep out of his way, then gave him the command she used with all the dogs she trained: “Find Henry!”
Kim looked from where Wally started across the yard with his nose to the ground to Jazz. “Who’s Henry?”
“He’s not anybody. It’s just a name I use. It sounds better than telling the dog to find the dead body.”
“But that’s what we want him to do.” Kim watched as Wally slipped through the flower beds, stopped near the back porch. She put a hand on Jazz’s arm. “Is that what he’s doing? Is he finding the body?”
“Actually”—Jazz watched Wally—“he’s peeing. Give him a minute, he’ll get back to work.”
Wally did, sniffing the ground, then raising his nose—just like he’d been taught—to try to catch any whiff of decomposition in the air.
“How will we know?” Kim asked.
“He’ll sit.” At least that’s what Wally had been taught to do those times when Jazz started introducing HRD training. “And he’ll bark three times.”
Only Wally didn’t do either.
He sniffed around the tree. He snuffled his way to the garage and back. He headed to the porch and nosed around before he flopped down on the lawn and rolled over on his back, clearly enjoying the wet grass and the evening air.
“What does that mean?” Kim asked.
What it meant was that Jazz could put this nonsense of the body in the backyard out of her mind.
“He didn’t find anything, Kim.” She put a hand on Nick’s mom’s shoulder. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“But—”
“If there had been a body here, Wally would have let us know.”
“But—”
“It means you’re all right. Don’t you get it? You didn’t kill anyone. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
She gave Wally a command to come, and when he did Jazz hooked his short leash to his collar. Hoping it didn’t look as much like an escape as it felt, she hurried back down the driveway toward her car. “You can rest easy and forget the whole thing.”
“Don’t know how I’m supposed to do that,” she heard Kim mumble. “I know dead when I see dead. And he … he was definitely dead.”